The Best Winter Picture Book

Over the years, I have come across many beautiful winter picture books! My absolute favorite is Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. This book tells the story of William Bentley and his lifelong love of snowflakes!

It also shows its readers the wonder that Bentley felt about snow from an early age and how that love of snow pushed him to research snowflakes so that he could share their beauty with others! Snowflake Bentley had many obstacles in his life but exhibited the power of perseverance. His persistence teaches readers that following your dreams, regardless of what others may say, can lead to achieving your goals.

Not only is this story heartwarming, but it lends itself so well to teaching many different areas of study! From Social Studies to Science and Reading to Critical Thinking, Snowflake Bentley is the perfect winter picture book to share with your students! Now that you are excited to read this book, here are three ways that you can use this incredible story in your classroom!

1. Review Reading Strategies with Snowflake Bentley

Learning new reading strategies can be daunting for our students. Students “get it” during the lesson, but can’t seem to transfer that knowledge to a text. Snowflake Bentley has an easy-to-follow plot with a likable main character and memorable lessons to learn. Because of this, students will easily be able to summarize the plot, list the story elements, find character traits to describe Snowflake Bentley, and choose themes that apply to the story.

By exploring the life of Snowflake Bentley from childhood to adulthood, this book gives students plenty of opportunities for sequencing events. Increase the difficulty of your lesson by asking students to find a cause or effect of certain events from the story.

The incredible scientific information that students learn from this book makes it perfect for teaching the difference between fact and opinion, as well! Students can discuss facts about Bentley’s life or snow, and then give their opinions about that information.

Also, Snowflake Bentley has a much richer vocabulary than your typical winter picture book. Students can explore the meaning of new words by utilizing word maps, while vocabulary games and making sentence activities will help cement those new words in their own speaking and reading vocabularies! Activities such as identifying synonyms & antonyms, sorting by parts of speech, and writing analogies also become much more meaningful when using more difficult words such as the vocabulary in this book.

Reviewing a multitude of different reading strategies has never been easier than with my Snowflake Bentley Reading Companion which includes all of the activities mentioned above!

2. Use Snowflake Bentley to Explore Writing

As excellent as this book is for working on reading skills and strategies, it works just as well for incorporating writing activities! Asking students to write to a prompt often doesn’t mean much if they don’t have the background knowledge to draw from. Your students will love Snowflake Bentley so much, that it won’t be difficult to get them to write based on this book!

Students can write creatively by comparing their uniqueness to how “no two snowflakes are alike” or pretending they could give a gift to the world as Snowflake Bentley did with his beautiful snow pictures.

Writing poetry can be a bit stressful for students as many struggle to understand how to write a poem. Try starting with a simple diamante poem featuring Snowflake Bentley. This style of poetry has sentence starters in which students simply fill in the blanks with the information they learned about Snowflake Bentley.

Acrostic Poems are another great way to introduce poetry without the stress, as students simply write words or phrases that describe the given word (think SNOWFLAKE or WINTER).

Since this book tells the story of Snowflake Bentley, have students write a biography about his life! They can use the information from the book to tell about his childhood, the obstacles he overcame, and the accomplishments he achieved. This is a great way to incorporate some research skills too!

If writing is seen as a chore by your students, definitely check out my Snowflake Bentley Book Companion for print-and-go versions of the writing activities that I just mentioned! Their enjoyment of Snowflake Bentley may just be the ticket to getting your students excited about writing after all!

3. Engage with Snowflake Science

Once you have read Snowflake Bentley, you will realize just how easy it is to sneak a little extra science into your day! The subject of snow is always interesting to students, but the amazing things they learned about it from your story will make it even more appealing!

Start by reading a short book (like the one provided in my Snowflake Bentley Book Companion) on the lifecycle of a snowflake. Then, have students fill out a diagram that explains the process from beginning to end.

Once they understand the lifecycle, teach students the different shapes of snow crystals. Using the information they learned, students can then look at pictures of real snowflakes and categorize them by shape!

Now that students have a good understanding of how snow forms, let students grow their own crystal snowflakes using borax and water! This fun activity gets them observing, making scientific guesses, and drawing cool pictures! Students can even compare and contrast different types of crystals under a microscope! That is sure to keep your students engaged and thinking on even the dreariest winter day!

Use these Winter Picture Book Ideas in Your Classroom!

I know that by now you see just how all-encompassing Snowflake Bentley can be for your winter lesson plans! I wasn’t wrong when I said that this book can cover a lot of standards! Sometimes though, it’s just easier to have all of these resources in one place instead of having to keep track of all these fantastic ideas on your own.

Every activity you have heard about in this blog post is available in this huge 200+ page Snowflake Bentley Book Companion resource in my TPT Store! There are so many amazing activities, both print and go as well as digital Google Slides, in this pack that you could easily run centers and small groups or teach lessons with your whole class for an entire month!

Check it out and see how much easier (and more fun!) teaching in winter can be!

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Go ahead and pin these amazing Snowflake Bentley teaching ideas to your favorite Pinterest teaching board! You will want them when dreary January rolls around!

Why Vocabulary Matters

As teachers in the primary grades, we touch on so many valuable topics throughout the year. But what makes vocabulary development so crucial? I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that having a broad vocabulary is absolutely critical to reading comprehension. We know that the more words children learn, the more information they can absorb and comprehend from books.

This is so valuable in the primary classroom when your children are just getting their feet wet with more advanced reading. Most teachers carry a deep love of reading and want to pass that along to their students. Growth in vocabulary will help to foster that deep love of reading as your students grow in confidence and ability. The more words you help your students learn, the more they can get out of their reading assignments!

How To Present Activities For Vocabulary Development

The best way to help students learn is by making sure the activities you choose are fun and engaging.

This is so true with vocabulary! Long-passed are the days of endless flashcards and worksheets to learn new words. We know we can support our students best by presenting them with activities that are appealing, engaging, and fun to participate in! So, what do you say, ready to level up?

I’m a big fan of hands-on learning games in the classroom and vocabulary-focused lessons provide so many great options. When choosing activities, keep in mind that you’ll want to have some variety and offer options for students at differentiated levels. Keep it challenging, but not so far overboard that your students can’t be independent. Here are a few of my favorites to get you started!

1. Read Picture Books for Vocabulary Development

If you’re a teacher in the primary grades, chances are you’ve got your fair share of picture books. Most often, seasonal or themed picture books are used in the classroom for read-alouds but they can also be a great way for students to learn new vocabulary. Many picture books have a more advanced reading level and will present many opportunities for your students to learn new words. I have MANY favorites but here are my top three picks for vocabulary development:

• Miss Alaineus by Deb Fraiser is my favorite vocabulary book. This one is funny and super engaging to students. In my room, I like to let my kids have a vocabulary parade after reading the book- just like in the story! This extension activity is a great way to use this book for a whole group lesson.
• Max’s Words by Kate Banks is a fantastic read for focusing on new vocabulary. This silly story follows a boy named Max as he builds a collection of words from newspapers and magazines. Students will love this story and learn lots of new words along the way.
• Finally, we can’t forget Animalia by Graeme Base. Each page is filled with glorious images highlighting a letter. Students can try to find as many images as they can on each page that begin with the focus letter. This is a great early finisher center activity for 4th and 5th graders.

These are just a few of my favorites but are so many great other ones out there. Here are a few more to keep an eye out for as you build your collection of vocabulary-focused picture books:

• Weighty Words Too by Paul Levitt
• Stegothesaurus by Bridget Heos
• The Word Collector by Peter Reynolds
• A Walk in the Words by Hudson Talbot
• Lexie the Word Wrangler by Rebecca Van Slyke
• Noah Webster and His Words by Jeri Chase Ferris
• Donavan’s Word Jar by Monalisa DeGross
• Hornswoggled by Josh Crute
• The Right Word by Jen Bryant
• The Boy Who Loved Words by Ronni Schotter
• The Word Collector by Sonja Wimmer
• Fancy Nancy by Jane O’ Connor
• Thesarus Rex by Laya Steinberg

2. Use Word Sorting Games

One of my favorite ways to target vocabulary skills is through word sorting and classification games. Providing opportunities for students to classify words is a great way to promote higher-level thinking and build grammar skills as well! Some of my favorite activities for this focus on Classifying and Sorting Common Nouns.

Working with common nouns provides students with new knowledge on how to sort items by group and explain the relationship between the objects. We start these activities by working with picture word cards and category labels. Students will work independently or in groups to categorize the words into the appropriate group. This is a great opener activity to introduce the nouns you’ll be working with.

Next, we move on to other activities that use these words. We play card games that focus on specific classification skills as well as activities that ask children to use critical thinking to identify items that don’t belong in a group. Finally, we round out the activities with follow-up worksheets that give a final review of what we’ve covered. I’ve found that using this blend of activities provides the most opportunity for vocabulary development and retention of new words.

3. Play Board Games for Vocabulary Development

I have always loved using board games in the classroom and these come in especially handy when focusing on vocabulary. These are 3 of my favorite board games to use in the classroom. I often see these at stores like Walmart and Target for very low prices, so keep an eye out!

Scrabble is likely the most classic vocabulary game and for good reason! This one will really get your students thinking. I like to split students up into groups and let them play this game as a Fun Friday activity. The more you play this game, the more they’ll get the hang of it and develop word-building skills. I like to have students write down words they build in their grammar journals to help keep track of what they have used over time.

Scattergories is another great option for the classroom. This game is a bit more advanced and might require your assistance so, I recommend trying this one in small groups until your kiddos get the hang of it. The object of this game is to come up with words that fit a specific letter and a category theme before the time is up.

Boggle is always a student favorite! If you’ve never played it before, it’s a 2-person game that focuses on finding the most words on a grid before the time is up. Students will start the timer and then write down as many words as they can find before the time is up! As a heads up, this one can get noisy so plan to use it at an appropriate time in your classroom schedule.

4. Make Alphabet Books

One of my favorite, simple activities to do as a class is make alphabet books. To do this, you will choose a theme and make a page for each letter of the alphabet. I like to do these as class books, where everyone contributes a page but you can also have students work on a page a day to create their own books.

As far as the theme goes, the possibilities are endless. You could do transportation, food, plants, seasonal themes, or animals. This is especially fun after reading Anamalia if you’re focusing on an animal theme!

To get started, choose your theme, assign letters, have your students come up with their words, and draw an illustration. I also like to have them write 2-3 sentences about their word. This could be facts about the word or simply using the word in the sentences. When everyone is done, you can bind the pages together and read the whole thing to your group. I recommend laminating the pages as well if you’re planning to store them in the classroom library!

5. Teach Synonyms for Vocabulary Development

Finally, I have one more fun idea for you to try! Teaching synonyms is a great way to help students learn new words and grow their vocabulary. A common one we work on in the primary classroom is synonyms for the word “said”. You may have heard of “said is dead” activities to target this. In my classroom, I love to use writing dialogue activities to work on this.

To do this, I like to start out with a slideshow that features a silly story all about animal dialogue. As you go through the slideshow, each animal featured will use a different synonym for said. This is a great way to introduce these new words in a fun and captivating way for students. My kiddos always get a kick out of this story and all the ways we can say said.

Next, I like to move on to using some task cards that allow students to work with some of the new words we learned. The task cards feature a picture and dialogue using the word said. Students must choose the word that would best replace the word said in each scenario. These are great for small groups, centers, and even whole group instruction.

Finally, I like to have my students put the words they’ve learned to use in their own stories! For this, I use silly picture prompts and ask students to write their own stories using some of the said synonyms we learned. The pictures in our writing prompts are real photos of animals. Students LOVE these prompts, and really enjoy coming up with silly stories to support them!

Get Started With Fun Vocabulary Activities In Your Room

You can find a variety of fun and engaging vocabulary activities for the primary classroom in the Keep ’em Thinking store on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Have fun planning your vocabulary activities and don’t forget to add variety and keep these FUN! Hands-on learning, games, and fun picture books are a great way to support your students in vocabulary development while keeping your lessons engaging!

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Don’t forget to save this post on your classroom Pinterest board so you’ll have all these ideas at your fingertips!

Children who finish their work quickly are often doing so because they need more of a challenge. They may have mastered what everyone else is still learning and their minds are hungry for MORE! I say, give it to them! It can be really easy to have students grab a book and get reading after they finish early, but it’s important to incorporate activities that will truly challenge students as well.

Using early finisher activities as an opportunity to provide time for higher-level, critical thinking is a great way to meet the needs of ALL of your students, no matter their abilities. Today, let’s talk about planning early finisher activities that will provide the most “bang for your buck” and how to implement them!

Early Finisher Activities To Avoid

Before we discuss the best types of activities, let’s touch briefly on what to avoid. There are lots of things out there you could include in your early finisher activities, but in my experience, there are a few things that should be off the table. Here’s my list, so you can keep this info top of mind as you plan:

• Additional Computer Practice: I find that there is already plenty of technology integration in most lesson plans. Avoid adding more practice on platforms such as IXL during this time. There are many other activities that will better serve your students!
• “Tutor” Other Kids: This one comes up quite often for gifted and talented learners, but just say no! Students should use early finisher activities time as a way to challenge themselves, not help others.
• Grade Papers: This one goes hand-in-hand with my last no-no. I don’t recommend asking students to grade papers during this time. While this is a useful activity in some cases, early finisher time is a valuable block that can be put to much better use!

So now that we’ve covered what I don’t recommend for early finisher activities, you might be wondering what my top picks are. I’m so glad you asked! As we dive into my 3 favorites, keep in mind that early finisher activities should challenge students, promote higher levels of thinking, and provide opportunities for personal growth. These 3 options touch on all of those areas!

1. Logic Puzzles

Logic puzzles are one of my favorite activities to include for early finishers. Logic puzzles are fun and engaging and will teach students reasoning, logical thinking, and comparing and contrasting. These puzzles are great for independent learning, making them an obvious choice for early finisher activities as well.

The logic puzzles I like to use feature a variety of styles including sudoku, magic squares, and matrix games in both print and digital options. The printables can be placed in a dry-erase sleeve for continued use and the digital ones are a great option for 1:1 classrooms. (They make a great technology center activity too!) \

Using logic puzzles can help build systematic thinking, and confidence while reducing boredom, making these an all-around win for me!

In my experience, logic puzzles are just tricky enough to keep students engaged while still being super enjoyable! If you want to give these a try in your classroom, be sure to grab the free sampler pack I made of these. There are 5 logic puzzles included in different formats so you can see how these work in your classroom.

If you are ready to jump in with critical thinking puzzles in your classroom then check out these resources.

2. Passion Projects

Passion projects are SUCH a fun activity to include in your lessons. Passion projects are investigative, project-based learning activities that help students identify their own, unique passions. By implementing these projects, your children will learn more about themselves in this student-centered curriculum. If you want to hear ALL the details about passion projects, be sure to read this blog post where I take a deep dive into passion projects and discuss in further detail how to get started using them.

The initial setup of passion projects will be a bit more hands-on and teacher-involved as you get students settled into their weekly action steps for working on passion projects. But once you have completed this, passion projects make a GREAT activity for early finishers! Students can take action on their own, personal passion projects after they complete their work. If you want to test-drive passion projects in your classroom, be sure to grab the lesson 1 freebie so you can see what they are all about! Or grab the entire resource and get started in your classroom with Passion Projects today!

3. Writing Center

Writing centers are such a great activity for students who finish their work early. If you have peeked around in my store before, you may have noticed how much I love writing centers. I have created a wide variety of them, with different themes to keep students engaged all year long!

Offering opportunities for students to express themselves through creative writing will boost confidence, enhance communication skills and help foster true joy in writing.

I recommend using a variety of writing centers geared towards different writing styles to keep things extra fun!

I love focusing on fables, narratives, dialogue, and seasonally-themed writing centers.

Check out these fun and engaging writing activities that will have your students begging for more!

Common Issues with Early Finisher Activities

After you have thought about how you might like to incorporate early finisher activities in your classroom, it’s a good idea to think about some of the challenges you might face. One that stands out most to me is children rushing through their work because they want to work on an early finisher activity.

This is a common issue in the classroom, especially if you’re choosing to use highly-engaging early finisher activities that are fun for students. I recommend combatting this with the following suggestions:

Ask for Quality

Children are smart. Sometimes all it takes to prevent this issue is an open, honest conversation.

Make sure students know the expectation in your classroom is high-quality work that they are proud of. Ask children to look over their work and double-check it before turning it in. Ask that they ensure they are proud of what they have written and tried their hardest before turning it in and moving on to the early-finisher activity.

In my experience, children appreciate this push for independence and personal responsibility. This helps to convey that you trust your students and know they will give it their all. This conversation is a good one to have frequently in the early stages of introducing early finisher activities as a reminder!

Use A Timer

A timer is another great option for students that need more than just a pep talk to slow down. You can set a timer that will tell students the minimum amount of time expected to complete the activity. This will take a bit of trial and error as you learn about how long it takes your students to complete various types of activities. Once you have a time basis, this can be a very helpful tool!

If students “finish” before the time is up, ask them to run through a checklist similar to this one to check for accuracy:

• Read the questions and check the answers. Did I answer the whole question? Is the answer right? Did I follow the directions?
• Are my sentences complete?
• Is my name, number, and date on my page?
• Is my handwriting neat and easy to read?
• Am I proud of this work?

You can adjust these questions, depending on the assignment but the idea here is to get your students thinking and slowing down a bit. If they did indeed answer yes to all questions, they can sit quietly at their desk, then they can bring you their work for a quick check. If you are confident they did their best work then they can move on.

Make Sure Everyone Gets A Chance To Try Early Finisher Activities

Some of your students may not ever finish in time to try some of these activities. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the whole time block allotted for their work, but you want to make sure they get the benefit of trying these critical thinking activities as well!

To make sure all your students get to try these activities, I recommend picking an activity or two each week where you make sure that everyone finishes and can move on to early finisher activities.

By doing this, students will quickly realize that they will get a chance to work on the early finisher activities even if it is not every day. This will help cut back on the “rushing through work” since students know they will get a chance. And. . . if you add Passion Projects as your early finisher activity, consider setting aside some time each week to work on them as a class.

Start Planning Your Early Finisher Activities

Now that you have an idea of the variety of early finisher activities you can use in your classroom, it’s time to get a plan in place! To keep things simple while also making sure to retain engagement, I recommend using a rotating schedule for your early finisher activities. You could plan to use logic puzzles 2 days a week, writing centers 2 days a week, and passion projects 1 day a week, for example.

If you don’t like the thought of changing them out often, create an Early Finisher Space where students can go and grab any of the available early finisher activities. You can add in a variety of puzzles and writing prompts and let students choose what they would like to work on.

Whatever you choose, be sure to remember to include variety in your early finisher activities! These activities are a great opportunity to really get your students thinking, challenge your high achievers, and help meet the diverse needs of your classroom! Take advantage of this often unused learning time and plan highly-engaging and thought-provoking early finisher activities!

Save These Early Finisher Activities

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Where Do I Find the Words?

You can choose these words from anywhere, but usually, the words are connected to your teaching standards. This might be your grade level sight words or words with your target phonics skills. It might also include math, science, and social studies vocabulary, names of students, and other words that have meaning to your class. Here are a few other places you might find words for your word wall:

• a text you are reading as a class
• spelling words
• words that students discover while reading independently

Everyone’s word wall will look different and that is okay. What is more important is what you do with it. Here are some engaging and interactive ways to use your classroom word wall.

Word Categories

Word walls are meant to be interactive, so let your students use them! Ask your students to read over your word walls and categorize the words into meaningful groups. Students may group words by parts of speech, subject area, or words that rhyme. Let them be creative in their categories and then challenge them to add some words of their own.

Word sorts can increase students’ understanding of content-related vocabulary and strengthen critical-thinking skills. Categorizing words allows students to communicate with others, make connections to words, and recall important terms. Creating categories lets students group their thoughts, facilitate meaning, and make connections with words.

Interact with Parts of Speech

Parts of speech are the building blocks of sentences. Even our youngest students are introduced to basic parts of speech in kindergarten. Students who know and use parts of speech correctly can construct better sentences and comprehend more advanced texts. Use your word walls to teach, review, and apply the parts of speech.

Ask students to identify all of the nouns on your word walls. Take it a step further and have them add an adjective to each noun to work on writing with description. Instruct children to use at least five verbs from the wall in their daily journal writing. Challenge students to rewrite a story by replacing common adjectives with more descriptive ones from the word walls. With the word wall available, you can push and challenge students to high levels knowing they have a tool at their fingertips.

Improve Word Choice

We all know that word choice plays a big part in the quality of our students writing. Exposing students to lots of words and vocabulary is an important part of the process. The word wall is a great place to house all those words. This not only gives exposure, but it puts the words front and center in the classroom so students can use them when writing.

Transfer this learning to literature and ask students to identify colorful sentences as they read.

Focus on Morphology

Students who understand where words come from will have a much larger vocabulary. Teaching students root words, prefixes, and suffixes empowers them. Students who know that –re means again, can apply this to unknown words they will encounter. While common prefixes and suffixes are not words in and of themselves, add them to the word wall anyway! Then let your students create new words by matching a prefix or suffix with another word from the word wall.

Here are a few other morphology activities you can do using the word wall. Use your word walls to pull out root words. Ask students which terms share a prefix or suffix. Choose a word from your word walls and deconstruct it. Students can make new words by changing, adding, or deleting different parts of the words.

Word Notebooks

Let your students make their own, personalized word notebooks. As you put a new word on your word walls, students can add them to their notebooks. Students can write the word’s definition, use it in a sentence, and write its part of speech.

Word notebooks are a great way to start your day! Choose a word from your word wall as the word of the day and write it on the board. As students come in, they will add the word to their word notebook. Part of this process includes writing the word, definition, and part of speech. Then have them illustrate the word and use it in a sentence. Older students can also find synonyms and antonyms as well as deconstruct the words looking for a prefix and/or suffix. These few minutes spent on digging into a word helps it to stick in students’ minds.

Literature Connections

There’s no better way to be introduced to words than through reading. Before reading a text to students, pull out the vocabulary words you feel are most important. Put them on your word wall. Not only will this help to build your students’ vocabulary, but it will also increase their comprehension.

Alternatively, ask students to find new words in books or class read-alouds. One fun option is to give students their own sticky notepad and pen before they read a new story. Tell them to listen to the text and write down the most interesting words they read or hear. Everyone gets a turn to share their favorite words at the end of the week. Take these words and add them directly to your word walls, or practice word categorization by sorting or grouping the words on a whiteboard.

You will find that your students are more interested and engaged with the word wall because they are an active part of its creation. You will also see them take more and more interest in words.

Multiple-Meaning Words

Multiple-meaning words can be challenging for students. The more students read, the more they will encounter multiple-meaning words. Students must rely on their background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension skills to decipher the words’ meanings.

Multiple meaning words are a perfect addition to your classroom word wall. When you add them, make a point of discussing the meaning and spelling of the words.

Multiple meaning words can be difficult for students. I’ve found that adding a small picture to the word card is a great way to help students remember each word’s meaning. This way they can use the word wall as a tool and use their newly learned words correctly.

Collaborative Learning

According to Cornell University, “Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and student-owned lead to deeper learning.” Let students choose partners or small groups to work with. Show students what collaboration looks like. Give them opportunities to share their knowledge and have meaningful discussions about words. Here are a few ideas for student groups:

• Jumble words – One student will write a scrambled word and ask the other student(s) to solve it.
• Word chains – Give students two vocabulary words. Instruct them to write one at the top of the word chain and the other at the bottom. Students will work together to connect the two words.
  • Example: rabbit – habitat – forest – timber
• Guessing games – Students can draw or act out words and their partner(s) will guess the words.
• Memory – Groups can create their own memory game with scrap paper. Students will write each word on a card and its meaning on another card. They repeat this with all words, turn the cards over, and make matches.

Editable Word Walls

If you are looking for an easy way to set up a word wall in your classroom then an editable word wall is a must. This allows you to add whatever words you’d like with ease. This Great Thinkers Word Wall kit is perfect for any classroom!

If you’d like to match your word wall to your classroom theme, then make sure to look at these word wall kits too! These are some of my favorites and you can grab them in the Keem em’ Thinking TPT store today!

• Jungle theme
• Ocean theme
• Superhero theme
• Camping theme

Save these Word Wall Ideas

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The Overuse of Words

Overusing words can cause writing and daily conversations to get boring fast. There are only so many times you can read or hear the same word before you start to check out. There’s a list of commonly overused words that should be “dead” and said is one of them.

But we can’t just stop with telling our students not to use the word said. We can’t expect them to be better writers if we don’t first help them expand their vocabulary. Synonyms are the perfect place to start.

How to Teach Synonyms for Said

Of course, we can break out an old grammar lesson explaining what a synonym is and how to find one. But how boring would that be? Not to mention that it would not be very meaningful or impactful for your students. You need to create a moment where students are fully engaged.

If they really understand what you are teaching them, they are much more likely to apply the skill in their writing. Here are 3 of my favorite ways to teach synonyms for said.

Synonyms & Dialogue Slideshow

This is a fun take on an old synonym grammar lesson. It’s a short story called Did You Hear What They Said at the Zoo? In this silly story, the animals at the zoo are playing a game saying as many said synonyms as they can come up with.

The story is told in rhyming couplets, is filled with great alliteration, and has beautiful illustrations. Your students will be completely enthralled in the story without even realizing how much they are learning. It’s a win-win and the perfect introduction to teaching synonyms for said to your class.

Synonyms for Said Practice

We all know how much kids LOVE to write dialogue in their stories, but it can be challenging for many of them. They need tons of practice using synonyms correctly. I have found task cards to be an effective way to do this.

I love this set of 40 task cards that provides students will lots of practice using synonyms for the word “said” appropriately. The cards each contain a picture and a sentence using the word. Students will select the correct synonym from the 4 provided choices.

Once they are done students can rewrite the sentence using the better word to see how the sound and feel of the sentence changes. As an extension, you can have students choose 3 – 5 of the said synonyms and write their own sentences.

These task cards are great for adding to independent stations or for a whole class game of Scoot! I’ve also used them during small group instruction so I can make sure students learn and understand these new vocabulary words.

Writing Prompts

Now that your kids have been introduced to synonyms for said and had some time to practice using them correctly in a sentence, it’s time for a writing prompt. I love to use fun pictures and questions for their prompts.

This FREE set of 25 photo writing prompts is called Did You Hear What They Said? and is a really FUN way to get kids writing dialogue with their new vocabulary.

Your kids will love writing about what the dancing bear would be saying using synonyms for said. They’ll also get a kick out of writing dialogue between two snails. They’ll focus on quotation marks and using synonyms for said correctly.

The entire set brings fun and is the perfect way to check their understanding. They’ll be begging you for more prompts every day.

Synonyms for Said All in One Spot

Ready to get started teaching synonyms for said? This Said is Dead Alternative Activity Bundle includes all of the activities we discussed above.

You will have everything you need to introduce, and practice synonyms for said in a fun and engaging way. Your students will learn to write and punctuate dialogue using synonyms for the word said. You’ll quickly notice how much more fluent and interesting their sentences become. The bundle includes:

• Dialogue and Synonyms for Said Task Cards
• Dialogue and Synonyms for Said Slideshow
• Writing Dialogue Photo Writing Prompts

Your students will gain the knowledge and confidence they need to bump up their writing fluency. Grab it now!

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May Madness

Buckle up! The fun is about to begin. With everything going on in May, it is important to plan meaningful and engaging activities that will keep everyone focused. It’s so easy to get lost in the fun and excitement of May. Instead, try tapping into all of the fun. Celebrate everything that is going on within your lessons. Here are some of my favorite days for fun and creative activities in May.

Let the Festivities Begin

Cinco de Mayo

Everyone loves a fiesta, so why not bring it into your classroom? Cinco de Mouse-O, written and illustrated by Judy Cox, is my favorite way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in my room. This fun book celebrates the joy of Mexican-American culture with bright pictures and a fun story. I love to use it as a read-aloud.

The book is so great that I created a literature companion guide to go with it. It’s a great way to really dig into this fun book and work on some key reading skills too. There are more activities than you will likely have time for, so choose what works best for you and your students.

Then it is time to jump into learning more about this May Holiday. Using the informational text in this Cinco de Mayo Activities Unit, your students will learn all about this holiday, its traditions, and the culture it stems from.

What better way to wrap up than with a fun and engaging craft with a writing element too? Your students will love this free Cinco de Mayo Craft & Writing Activity! It’s the perfect review activity after students learn about the Cinco de Mayo holiday. Everything you need to create this cute craft is included in this free download.

When you are done, review everything you learned about Cinco de Mayo with this fun game show. Your students will love playing this game as a class as they show off all they learned about this May holiday.

National Limerick Day

Don’t let May 12 pass by without celebrating National Limerick Day. It’s the perfect opportunity to introduce this fun and often silly type of poetry to your students.

Limericks are rhyming poems that consist of 5 lines. They are pretty much a poem and a joke put together!

The read-aloud, Something Sure Smells Around Here by Brian Cleary, is just what you need for an awesome limerick lesson.

The book will keep your students attention while teaching them how limericks work and making them laugh along the way.

After the read-aloud, have your students create their very own limerick.

This is the perfect opportunity to practice those speaking and listening skills. Have your students share their silly poems with each other. This lesson is sure to be a hit!

Jumping Frog Day

Have you ever heard of such a day? May 13th allows you to celebrate!

You know I love a good read-aloud, and Mark Twain’s short story, “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country”, fits the bill.

This is the story that put Twain on the map as a famous writer.

After reading the short story, I love to have an origami lesson on jumping frogs. The Printables Fairy has some great visual instructions so you can make them with your students too!

The kids always love the opportunity to do something fun and different.

This is one of my favorite fun and creative activities for May.

Scavenger Hunt Day

May 24th is Scavenger Hunt Day and a great day to get outside and enjoy nature.

Take your students on a nature walk while hunting for things like flowers, butterflies, bird nests, and rocks.

There’s nothing more exciting than getting your students actively involved in their learning process.

Be sure to grab my FREE Nature Scavenger Hunt download to get the party started!

National Creativity Day

May 29th just might be my favorite day of the month. It’s National Creativity Day and the perfect time to get our students ‘ creative juices flowing.

Creativity is something we should always be intentional about incorporating into our daily lessons. It ignites a part of our brain that doesn’t always get to show off.

Grab my FREE Brainstorm Activity to add some intentional creative thinking activities int your day.

Your students will love the opportunity to think outside of the box and come up with some unusual, wild, and crazy ideas.

After they ping pong ideas off of each other, they’ll be stretched to come up with even MORE ideas! So much fun!

May is National Inventor’s Month

Celebrate all kinds of innovative ideas for the entire month of May!

National Inventor’s Month is the perfect time to introduce some STEM activities to your class.

My Stem/Engineering Activities is the perfect resource to use all month long. Not only will students have a chance to create, but they will learn about the engineering design process too! The 8 design challenges in this resource are based on the same engineering design process used by NASA.

Engineering is important to teach to our students. It allows them to be creative, teaches them to think critically, requires group work, teaches persistence, and is fun and engaging!

It’s a win all the way around.

The Possibilities Are Endless

As you can see, these fun and creative activities for May give you plenty of lesson options. Your students will be completely engaged while learning no matter what you choose. We all know this is no easy feat for May. I can’t wait to hear about which activities you will incorporate into your classroom.

Grab these fun and engaging May activities today from my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

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When it starts to warm up and those daffodils start poking through the dirt, you know it is time to pull out those spring activities! You love a good theme, but with so much else on your plate, I’m sure it seems like a monumental task to brush off and prep all of those old activities. This list of spring activities will breathe fresh life into your classroom with minimal prep!

Spring Would You Rather

I don’t know about you, but my students loved “Would You Rather” activities! So, I always made sure to have one ready to go in our writing center.

With questions like: “Would you rather waddle like a duck or hop like a frog?” my students loved practicing their opinion writing skills.

For the best results, I would always put together 4-6 question choices on a ring so that students could easily flip through and make a choice. Then in folders, I would put graphics organizers so that they were easily accessible to help them plan their writing.

Try these Spring Would You Rather questions in your classroom for free! With 18 prompts and graphic organizers, your writing center will be all set for spring!

You Can Write a Spring Story

Once your students have their fill of opinion writing, another great activity for your writing center is You Can Write a Spring Story.

For this spring activity, I would leave out spring-themed cards for students to choose from that would help them build their stories.

Students would pick a setting, problem, and character cards. You can also have them randomly draw these cards for an extra challenge.

Using these cards, they would have the key pieces of information needed to work on their story. This activity uses a variety of graphic organizers to guide students through steps to develop their characters and help them plan their writing before getting started.

Spring Logic Puzzles

Want some unique spring activities that students probably haven’t done before? These Spring Logic Puzzles are perfect for bringing some novelty into your classroom this spring!

Logic puzzles are a great way to develop skills in logical thinking, problem-solving, making inferences, drawing conclusions, recognizing similarities and differences, as well as comparing and contrasting.

With Sudoku picture puzzles, matrix logic puzzles, and Magic Square puzzles, these activities will have your students excited to play while their brains are doing hard work!

I loved using these logic puzzles as morning warm-ups to get students ready to learn for the day and for early finishers who could use an extra challenge.

Birds On a Wire Sequencing Puzzles

Just like the Spring Logic Puzzles, Birds on a Wire is a fun way to help students improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Students must use logic and reasoning to create a set of birds on a wire that satisfies all the clues in the puzzle.

The activities require them to analyze statements about relationships, evaluate a solution to see if it meets given criteria, explain their reasoning, create more than one solution to a problem, and generate their own problems and solutions.

Spring Math Logic Puzzles

If you haven’t noticed yet, I loved using logic puzzles in my classroom! There is nothing more important than helping our students learn critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

This is why I always made sure to have a lot of spring activities where students could work on these skills.

These Spring Math Logic Puzzles focus on algebraic reasoning. I would set up the task cards that contained both addition and subtraction puzzles in our math center for students to work through.

These spring activities were perfect for developing a math mindset, promoting critical thinking, and providing enrichment opportunities for high achievers and early finishers.

Picture Books About Spring

Chicken Sunday

Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco is a perfect read-aloud for springtime, especially around Easter. This story features a young Russian girl and focuses on interracial friendships. It is a beautiful story about the power of family.

The children in the book set out to get their gramma Eula an Easter hat she wanted. Unfortunately, they don’t go about getting a hat in the right way, but in the end, they learn exactly how to get gramma Eula what she wants.

Read alouds like this one are a fantastic way to teach and practice story elements. That is why I created a literature guide to help students think deeply about the text and practice responding to literature. I’ve found that pairing the read-aloud with this literature guide helped my students get the most out of Chicken Sunday!

Miss Rumphius

Miss Rumphius, written and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, is one of my favorite picture books to read during the spring and to celebrate Earth Day.

In this story, Miss Rumphuis sets out to help make the world more beautiful by planting lupines. Miss Rumphuis lives an eventful life traveling the world, but she doesn’t figure out how to make the world more beautiful until she is an old woman looking out her window at the lupines in her yard. She decides to spread lupine seeds all over her town to spread beauty. Then every spring her community is filled with colorful lupines for all to enjoy.

A lovely story about leaving the world a better place than before, your students will fall in love with Miss Rumphius. I loved pairing the reading of this story with activities from this literature guide during the week before Earth Day. I’m certain your students will love these spring activities as well!

You can learn more about how I used to celebrate Earth Day in my classroom in this post!

No Stress Spring Activities For Your Classroom

There are many ways to bring the excitement of spring into the classroom. You can find all of these activities and more in my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

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Mistakes are a Good Thing

From an early age, we are pressured by society to be the best all the time. The pressure comes from our parents, friends, social media, coaches, and even ourselves. If we continue to believe in this perfectionism mindset we will be a constant ball of stress. It’s exhausting trying to be perfect 100% of the time.

Nobody should have to live under that kind of pressure, especially kids. That’s why it is so important for us to begin to teach children why it’s important to make mistakes at an early age. Teaching mistakes in the classroom will help to break this perfectionism mindset and set our students up for a life of learning through successes and failures.

Kids need to understand that mistakes are a part of everyday life and are supposed to happen. If we teach mistakes in a positive way, it can be life-changing for our students.

We need to break it down simply for them and teach them how to learn from a mistake. This will promote self-reflection and a growth mindset which will ultimately lead to creating happier and more productive people.

Teaching Mistakes and Effort

There are many different ways you can teach this life lesson in your classroom. There will be plenty of instances that arise throughout the day that make perfect teaching opportunities. Teaching mistakes is often most effective when it is directly connected to everyday life. What better example than ourselves in the classroom.

Use yourself as an example when it comes to teaching mistakes. It can be something as simple as forgetting to change the date on the board. Point that out to students. Have a conversation with them about the mistake. This promotes critical thinking and analytical skills. Ask them:

• What is the worst thing that happened because of my mistake?
• Does it change who I am as a person?
• What can I learn from it?
• How can I be sure it doesn’t happen again?
• How did the mistake make me feel?

You can do the same thing when a student comes up to you upset about forgetting to complete their homework assignment, or when someone makes a bad choice in class with a friend. Going a step further by typing out a reflection sheet with questions like this can also be helpful.

A Lesson on Why It’s Important to Make Mistakes

In addition to the natural mistakes that happen in the day to day, I do take the time to teach a formal lesson on making mistakes. It’s one of my favorite things to teach because it is so thought-provoking. You can see your students’ mindset grow around making mistakes throughout the year. I love to use a picture book and a literature guide for my lesson.

Start With a Picture Book

The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett and Gary Rubinstein is my favorite story for this unit.

This story is about a little girl named Beatrice who was always perfect. Until one day she wasn’t, and she was okay with it. In fact, she even enjoyed it.

It is great for teaching a positive mindset about mistakes and promoting self-esteem. Plus, I can hit so many content standards during the lesson.

Before reading the book, we begin with some pre-reading activities. This is a great time to have students ask questions and make predictions.

We spend a lot of time looking at the cover of the book. I also do a picture walk of the first seven pages of the book before we read it. You can hit the nitty-gritty of making predictions here.

More than Just Mistakes

I treat the book as I would when teaching any other short story or novel. We cover important reading comprehension skills while also digging into the themes of the story. That’s what makes teaching with books so effective.

I love starting with vocabulary. We also spend lots of time analyzing the text in different ways. We use tools like comprehension questions, story maps, and graphic organizers.

We hit skills such as theme, characters, and plot structure. We even focus on different writing activities. BUT . . . my favorite part of teaching this picture book is focusing on mindset strategies and growth.

Teaching our students about the importance of making mistakes and learning from them is so easy with this book. As a teacher, it is all too easy to get caught in just teaching the standards, but there are so many personal skills that get left out when we do this. Life skills are so important to teach our students. The best way I’ve found to do this is by weaving them in with other lessons.

Teaching Mistakes in the Classroom Just Got Easier

Are you ready to teach your students about the importance of making mistakes and learning from them? Everything you need is in this The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes Literature Guide! In addition to teaching mistakes, the unit aims to help students develop reading skills too!

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Teaching Biographies can be Exciting

When teaching biographies in my classroom I like to immerse my students into the lives of the person they are learning about. From decorating the classroom to dressing up like the person we are studying, the possibilities are endless. This really helps to “bring the person to life” and make the learning more engaging and realistic for our students.

No matter what biography you are focusing on, these 3 creative ideas for teaching biographies are going to be so fun your kids will be begging for more!

1. EXTRA! EXTRA!

Read all about it in this year’s edition of the 3rd grade Daily Times. And that’s the hook! One of my favorite ways to immerse my students into learning is to turn them all into little reporters. At the end of our biography unit, we create a newspaper. It includes articles about each of the people of influence we focused on. I can’t tell you how excited my students get when they hear they will be writing and “publishing” a newspaper!

I like to put students in groups of 3 or 4. Then, give each one a person they will be focusing on. As a group, they must choose graphic organizers to will help them record information about their person. They can read an article that I provide, get information from a book, or research the person on a safe search site.

After reading the information about their person, they use the graphic organizers they chose to record important information about the person. This is the “interview” for the article.

Pulling it all Together

Next, it’s time to put the information from the graphic organizers all together. They will write all of the information in one article that will be included in our newspaper. The newspaper can be tangible if you want your students to assemble it and include their own drawings. But, it can also be digital with each group focusing on specific slides. This can then be projected on a whiteboard or viewed on a tablet or computer.

Not only is it a great way for students to learn from informative text, but it also gives you a fun and easy way to assess their learning. Sharing the newspaper in the school library is sure to be a hit. Teachers or librarians can read the newspaper articles to classes when they visit the library. So cool!

This really is such a great way for me to teach biographies in an easy way my students love!

2. The Life and Times…

This is a fun timeline activity that begs to be interactive! When teaching biographies, I love to use timelines because it gives students a concrete visual of when key events took place. This helps students better able to identify with the life of the person they are studying.

For example, if we are focusing on Amelia Earheart, I create a huge timeline that goes around my classroom. We start at the beginning and focus each day on an aspect of her life. We add information to the timeline as we go, and this is where those awesome graphic organizers come into play.

With a cause and effect graphic organizer, I can ask my students to think critically about events in the life of Amelia Earheart. Then we can discuss how those events shaped her future. As we learn about other things that are happening in the world, we can add those to the timeline as well.

I can’t tell you how awesome it is to get those “lightbulb” moments! I love when students make connections between world events and the person they are studying.

The end of our timeline activity concludes with a flipbook with all the information we have learned about Amelia Earheart. My kids really love this activity because they are allowed to get up and walk around. They take their clipboards to make notes from the timeline to help them complete the information for the flipbook. It’s a great way for them to show off their learning when they take it home.

3. Pick a Person

This is a really fun way to build excitement when teaching biographies. I put the names of all the people I want my students to choose from when working on their biographies. Then, after arranging my class into 4 or 5 groups, it’s time for the choosing ceremony. Each team gets to reach inside a basket and draw the name of a person. This will be the person they will be responsible for reporting on at the end of the unit.

Next, each group has to do some research on the person of influence they will be focusing on. This could mean a special trip to the library for the group to check out a book, some safe search research on the computer, or even a look through our biographies section of our class book boxes. I think this is a great way to give your students a little independence and responsibility they will be overjoyed to get.

Graphic organizers are so great for biographies because there is so much information available out there. It can feel overwhelming for kids to try to organize their thoughts and recall important facts and details about the lives of the people we are studying. They are a great way to get our students to really focus on what’s important and what they want to include in their presentations.

The Presentations

Now, it’s time for the really fun part! I give my students some time to think about how they could present their information to the class. Some groups like to use technology and create a video slideshow, a recorded skit, or even a self-made news clip featuring their famous person. Other groups may want to get creative and make a poster with visual images representing the information they learned about the person they are focusing on.

If a free choice scenario isn’t your cup of tea, consider making a list of presentation options you would be comfortable with. By giving students some choice in their final presentation you really get to see them tap into strengths and creativity. No matter how you choose to have your students present the information, chances are they will have a blast doing it!

Grab Your Free Biography Graphic Organizers

I have put together my favorite graphic organizers to use when teaching biographies and you can grab them for free! Just join the Keep ’em Thinking community to get access to the Free Resource Library. You can find these biography graphic organizers and lots more!

Just sign-up below and grab your free graphic organizers today!

Teaching Biographies is a Breeze

Teaching biographies really is a breeze! With customizable graphic organizers to help your students, they will not only focus on the information they are learning but recall it.

And . . . if you need some ready-to-use biographies check out the Keep ’em Thinking store. You can find a variety of biography resources that are perfect to use with the graphic organizers.

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Engaging Activities for the Entire Month

#1 Set the Mood with Read-Alouds

This just might be my favorite fun February activity! Books are the perfect way to set the tone for a unit, a lesson, or even a theme. I love how my entire class is able to come together and enjoy a story. There’s nothing quite like it.

So, I like to introduce February by reading books such as Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli, and The Day it Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond. These delightful picture books set the tone for our February theme and lend themselves well to lessons and activities of their own.

#2 Book Companions & Literature Guides

I love teaching a variety of skills and concepts using a picture book. A good book makes the lesson so much more interactive and engaging for your students. Plus, you can cover so many standards at the same time. Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch is the perfect book for a February book study activity.

I like to incorporate activities where students are encouraged to think critically and creatively while completing a variety of activities focusing on skills such as :

• Making predictions
• Summarizing
• Sequencing
• Inferencing
• Comprehension
• Cause and effect
• Identifying theme
• Compare and contrast
• Vocabulary
• Compound words
• Adjectives, nouns, and verbs

If you aren’t sure where to start, take out your list of standards and see what needs to be covered. Use the standards as your guide as you are preparing your lesson. Or, grab my Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch Unit, and dive right into all of these activities and more.

While this book study is perfect for February, I love to use them all year long. You can find even more literature guides and book studies in my store.

#3 Writing Centers

Writing can be fun for everyone if we set our students up for success. I do this by providing them with a solid path. Too many choices and open-ended topics can leave our students distressed with writer’s block. After all, without a starting point, there are millions of things you could write about. That can be very overwhelming for our students.

I like to provide students with limited choice as they complete a writing activity. I allow my students to pick from a deck of cards specific choices for the plot, characters, setting, and items. This eliminates the overwhelm while still providing choice. I like to set up all the cards and guided writing activities in the writing center. Students will start by choosing the cards for each of the story elements.

Pre-Writing Activities

Before jumping in with their writing students will be guided through activities to help them think through their characters and setting. This focused time really makes character development and setting the scene easy when students are ready to write.

Students will use the guided writing worksheets to think through descriptions of their characters and to describe their setting with details.

Next, they’ll complete a story map and story summary. That’s right – one more planning step before they actually start writing. This step guides students to make an outline of their story. It is super helpful to be sure their story has a beginning, a middle, and an end in logical order. I don’t know about you, but this slowed-down, guided approach to writing was not how I first started teaching it. But once I started I never looked back!

Writing Activities

Next, it’s time for a rough draft and editing. Depending on the age of your students you can do this in different ways. You can edit with them or have them peer edit. At this point in the process, I love to provide them with a word list with examples of transition words, vivid verbs, Valentine’s words, and great sensory words to amp up their stories for their final drafts.

For the final draft, have your students complete it in a journal, on a decorative sheet of paper, or on plain writing paper. Illustrating their stories is always a fun added bonus.

Then, you can hit those speaking and listening standards by having them present their stories to the class. If you’re short on time you can pick up my resource You Can Write a Valentine’s Day Story that’s already done for you. It’s available in digital and print formats.

#4 Games

Everything is more fun with a game! This makes them the perfect fun February activity! I like to include games in my lessons whenever possible. They are awesome for an interactive review of a topic or skill. Creating your own version of games like Memory, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Connect Four is easy to do. Just grab some practice questions, form teams, and get playing. No fancy board game is needed. Draw a game board on the front board and just have fun practicing and reviewing.

Games are so versatile. They can be used for whole group instruction, small group work, centers, early finishers, and extra practice and reinforcement. One of my favorite review activities is Powerpoint Games. These Jeopardy-style games are engaging and fun for everyone. Here are a few of my February favorites that are perfect for practice and review this time of year!

February is Black History Month

We can’t plan our February lessons without making sure to teach our students about Black History Month. This blog post will also give you some great teaching ideas for Black History Month that you and your students will love. While we can teach our students about the significant contributions of African Americans in our country all year long, I also like to bring special attention to these amazing men and women during February.

One of my favorite book studies of the year is Pies from Nowhere by Dee Romito. This wonderful book details the life of Georgia Gilmore, an important African American woman who played a critical role in the civil rights movement. This literature guide will help you teach this important figure and her accomplishments while also working on key reading skills.

When teaching about people and history you can’t go wrong with biographies. These African American biographies are a great way to connect social studies and reading instruction. Your students will love learning about these famous Americans and their accomplishments.

February Freebies

I want to do my part in sharing the love this month, so I’m offering this fun Minute to Win it Valentine’s Day Game pack for FREE! Your class will be divided into teams of four while completing these 7 challenges. You and your students will absolutely love this fun February activity for your classroom. Use it as part of your class Valentine’s Day party or as a class reward.

You can also find more free February activities in the Member-Only Free Resource Library. Here are just a few of the February freebies you will find!

Sign up below to access all the freebies!

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